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This book provides a critical political economic examination of the impact of increasingly concentrated global media industries. It addresses different media and communication industries from around the globe, including film, television, music, journalism, telecommunication, and information industries. The authors use case studies to examine how changing methods of production and distribution are impacting a variety of issues including globalization, environmental devastation, and the shifting role of the State. This collection finds communication at a historical moment in which capitalist control of media and communication is the default status and, so, because of the increasing levels of concentration globally allows those in control to define the default ideological status. In turn, these concentrated media forces are deployed under the guise of entertainment but with a mind towards further concentration and control of the media apparatuses many times in convergence with others
List of contents
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction - Randy Nichols and Gabriela Martinez; Part I - The Film Industry; Chapter Two - The Hollywood Trilogy, The Disney Duo - Eileen R. Meehan; Chapter Three - Movie Theaters and Money: Integration and Consolidation in Film Exhibition - Ben Birkinbine; Chapter Four - How Hollywood workers unite: Labor convergence and the creation of SAG-AFTRA - Catherine McKercher and Vincent Mosco; Chapter Five - Mexican Film Industry, 2000-2018: Resurgence or assimilation? - Rodrigo Gomez; Part II - Other Media Industries; Chapter Six - The New Holy Grail: Prime Time Television and State Production Incentive in the United States - William M. Kunz; Chapter Seven - Old Strategies in the New Paradigm: Web Series and Corporate Control - Mary P. Erickson; Chapter Eight - State Monopoly of Telecommunications in Ethiopia: Revisiting Natural Monopoly in the Era of Deregulation - Téwodros W. Workneh and H. Leslie Steeves; Chapter Nine - Through Being Cool: iTunes and the Political Economy of Music Retail - David Gracon; Chapter Ten - In Practice and Theory? A Review of Scholarship on Wikipedia's Political Economy - Randall Livingstone; Part III - New and Enduring Challenges; Chapter Eleven - Bribe and Journalism - Jörg Becker; Chapter Twelve - Labor in the Age of Digital (Re)Production - Gerald Sussman; Chapter Thirteen - Power Under Pressure: Digital Capitalism In Crisis - Dan Schiller; Chapter Fourteen - Minutes to Midnight: Capitalist Communication and Climate Catastrophe - Graham Murdock; Chapter Fifteen - Time, Ecology, and Commodity Fetishism - Wayne Hope
About the author
Randy Nichols is an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma, USA.
Gabriela Martinez is a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon, USA.
Summary
This volume examines prevalent themes in the study of media work and industries---labor, power, money---by discussing their relevance to new media platforms, to the crisis economy, and to the rise of non-Western economies.
